Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
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TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
PRESS
June 24, 2024
Napa Valley Register
DxE has disrupted Florence at nearly a dozen events across the U.S., where activists have held signs that read: ‘Stop Supporting Petaluma Poultry's Criminal Animal Abuse.’ DxE claims that Petaluma Poultry, a poultry producer for which Florence is a brand ambassador, has violated animal cruelty laws at several of its locations in Northern California. Activists allege that many of the birds processed by Petaluma Poultry are injured, have been left to starve, and are carrying infectious diseases that are hazardous to public health.
PRESS
June 24, 2024
Napa Valley Register
PRESS
June 9, 2024
Politico
“These industrial facilities harm animals,” said Cassie King, a member of Direct Action Everywhere. “They exacerbate wildfires and droughts. They are incubators for disease, like the avian flu that was mentioned, which has spread to mammals and humans. They pollute our air and water. They most impact the health of workers and people who live nearby these facilities.”
PRESS
June 9, 2024
Politico
PRESS
June 9, 2024
ABC Bay Area
Outside, animal rights activists held a funeral precession for the horses they say have been euthanized here. "It's bittersweet. We're happy this is a step forward for the animals that will no longer be exploited and killed here," said Kitty Jones from Direct Action Everywhere.
PRESS
June 9, 2024
ABC Bay Area
PRESS
June 8, 2024
East Bay Times
Horse racing may never return to Berkeley if voters this November approve a measure banning factory farms. Facilities can earn that designation from federal regulators if they house especially large populations of livestock — in this case, the threshold is 500 horses.
PRESS
June 8, 2024
East Bay Times
PRESS
May 14, 2024
Daily Californian
“In an effort to deflect their own responsibility and failure to protect animals (the prosecution is) really trying to make an example out of people like Ms. Rosenberg,” defense attorney Chris Carraway said. “As a result, they are throwing as many charges as they want in order to scare people from blowing the whistle.”
PRESS
May 14, 2024
Daily Californian
PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2024
Berkeley student in Perdue poultry case now faces 1 felony and 3 misdemeanors
PRESS
May 4, 2024
Davis Vanguard
“As Ms. Rosenberg’s years-long efforts to obtain enforcement of animal cruelty laws shows, prosecutors are more focused on silencing those who expose animal cruelty than stopping the cruelty itself,” said Chris Carraway, Rosenberg’s lawyer and a staff attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project.
PRESS
May 4, 2024
Davis Vanguard
BLOG
April 29, 2024
My findings show that “No Antibiotics Ever” just means that the chickens are still experiencing severe infection but they aren’t receiving the medication they desperately need. In one barn at a Petaluma Poultry factory farm in Santa Rosa, more than 10% of the chickens died by the time they reached 5 weeks. That is more than double the accepted industry mortality rate.
PRESS
April 29, 2024
Daily Californian
“The Associated Students of the University of California has recognized that nonhuman animals are sentient beings,” the resolution reads. “The act of investigating conditions of commercial animal operations and exposing abuses to the public and law enforcement is in the interests of both those individual animals and the public that cares about them.”
PRESS
April 29, 2024
Daily Californian
TOP PRESS
October 10, 2024
Vox
In principle, there’s a lot of sense in capping the size of factory farms. Measure J’s proponents are betting that progressive Sonoma County, better known for its tasting rooms than its slaughterhouses, can push California — and the nation — in that direction.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.
TOP PRESS
August 30, 2024
San Francisco Chronicle
In dimly lit indoor aisles at Weber Family Farms in Petaluma, hundreds of thousands of white chickens live out their 90 weeks of life. They fly from perch to perch. They dust bathe in the bedding. They nip at water dispensers. They lay egg after egg. And they never leave. These barns are at the heart of a bitter fight that Mike Weber and Samantha Faye are waging for the future of local farming.
TOP PRESS
April 4, 2024
Los Angeles Times
Lewis Bernier, an animal rights activist supporting the initiative, said he has visited several factory farms across the country, documenting inhumane treatment, and one farm in Sonoma County stands out as having “the worst and most systemic animal cruelty that I’ve ever seen.”
TOP PRESS
March 15, 2024
The New Yorker
Instead of planning actions, many activists now spend their time litigating microaggressions and small disputes within their ranks... As a response, [DxE co-founder Wayne] Hsiung has tried to promote a maxim of "braver spaces, not safer spaces," which encourages the animal rights community to put aside their individual concerns, if possible, and do things like risk felony jail time for the cause.
TOP PRESS
January 30, 2024
The Guardian
If successful in Berkeley, a liberal San Francisco Bay Area town that’s often been at the forefront of US environmental policy, the method can be replicated elsewhere, [activists] say. “We can pave the path to abolishing factory farming,” said Cassie King, an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, one of the groups that pushed for the measure.
TOP PRESS
November 9, 2023
Vox
Hsiung’s trial and conviction show the extraordinary difficulty of trying to discuss what happens to animals on factory farms in a legal system that only sees them as property. At both factory farms in this case, DxE had documented gruesome conditions prior to their open rescue actions and had submitted animal cruelty complaints to authorities (though no action was taken by legal officials, King said). Yet it was the activists, not the farm owners, who were criminally charged and had to explain themselves to a jury.
TOP PRESS
November 8, 2023
Wired
For the first time, guerrilla animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere reveals a guide to its investigative tactics and toolkit, from spy cams to night vision and drones. Bernier says that DxE decided to publicly release its guide, even in the wake of Hsiung’s conviction, to help activists who are already committed to carrying out covert investigations do their work more safely and effectively.
TOP PRESS
November 4, 2023
The Intercept
Hsiung’s defense was in many ways stymied from the jump. The judge barred almost all photo and video evidence of animal cruelty from the trial, as has been the case in a number of previous DxE trials. As I’ve previously noted, the decision to disallow such evidence is usually made to benefit a defendant — not showing gruesome images of a murder victim, for example. Such logic has been flipped in DxE cases, including Hsiung’s most recent, to the benefit of powerful agribusiness.
BLOG
December 13, 2022
The feeling of hearing those words “not guilty” after five long years of the uncertainty and judicial bureaucracy was indescribable. But mostly I felt proud. Proud of the jury, our legal team, and Direct Action Everywhere.
BLOG
December 6, 2022
Preliminary hearings finally happened for Rachel and Jon. The prosecution argued that they were "co-conspirators" in the 2018 and 2019 rescues at Sonoma County factory farms. Judge Urioste agreed to send the case to trial on felony charges.
BLOG
November 30, 2022
Corporations seem more concerned with shielding the practices of their suppliers from the public than with the cruelty and disease documented in those farms. They know that the public would be horrified if they saw the truth. But what these corporations don’t understand is that repression often makes movements stronger. I’m not going to stop talking about what happens to animals, and I’m not going to stop documenting protests.
BLOG
November 24, 2022
Back in October, DxE's Lead Organizer Almira Tanner spoke at the inaugural AVA Summit. Check out her talk: Building a Mass Movement for Animals.
BLOG
November 7, 2022
Do your homework, get feedback, and find the simple story.
BLOG
September 20, 2022
Today, a coalition of advocacy groups filed an amicus letter to the California Supreme Court in support of this case, written by the First Amendment Coalition and signed by Greenpeace USA, ACLU of Northern California, Amazon Watch, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and many more.
BLOG
September 19, 2022
Why is it that 60 years after the Freedom of Speech Movement, we can’t rally more than 200 people to fight for the future of our planet? Why is it that when we’re being faced with injustices like racism, fascism, worker abuse, animal abuse, income inequality, loss of reproductive rights and environmental destruction, one of the most progressive student bodies in the world barely rises up?
BLOG
September 18, 2022
Rose was the sole survivor of all the birds at McCoy’s that day, and amid the tragedy that occurred for the others, Rose’s story offered a glimmer of hope. The fact that her rescue was permitted was proof that they all deserved to be rescued, that even the police knew rescuing them was the right thing to do.
BLOG
September 10, 2022
The systems we have designed for animals are mentally abusive from the very beginning.
PRESS RELEASE
July 17, 2023
“This closure is a win for horses and for vulnerable humans who are taken advantage of by the gambling industry,” says Rocky Chau, a DxE activist who was arrested during a protest on the GGF track in March 2021.
PRESS RELEASE
June 13, 2023
Hundreds are gathered outside the slaughterhouse calling on the Sonoma County District Attorney to prosecute Petaluma Poultry for documented criminal animal cruelty and infectious diseases that are endangering public health
PRESS RELEASE
June 10, 2023
While hundreds rallied in support of the right to rescue animals from abuse, a few activists delivered “feeder” mice and suffering betta fish to safety.
PRESS RELEASE
May 31, 2023
Recent similar trials in St. George, UT and Merced, CA resulted in groundbreaking acquittals for open rescuers.
PRESS RELEASE
May 5, 2023
Congresswoman Claudia Tenney wants federal funds used to surveil people who support rescuing animals in distress.
PRESS RELEASE
May 3, 2023
Animal rights activists are calling this a win for the right to rescue animals from abuse.
PRESS RELEASE
April 25, 2023
A Beaver County Judge convicted Curtis Vollmar of criminal trespass and disorderly conduct for talking to members of the public about Smithfield Foods.
PRESS RELEASE
April 24, 2023
The “Right to Rescue” is a hot topic after a California jury acquitted two activists who removed sick birds from a Foster Farms slaughter truck. Jurors, defendants, attorneys, and law professors gathered to discuss the verdict's meaning for laws related to corporate animal abuse, animal rescue, and animal personhood.
PRESS RELEASE
April 16, 2023
A California jury found two women “not guilty” for rescuing sick birds from a Foster Farms slaughter truck.
